New Joiners - People #527

Very nicely done. I love the expression - the tilt of the head and the hair falling casually about. I especially like the tonal wash - a cool, even chilly hue. I think If I'm honest the hands look a little 'clumpy' and less than elegant and I could have done with a touch more light on the model's right side to break up the very dense shadows, but this is a lovely image. Well done.

I like this. I like that I get a strong sense of both of the subject and what he does for a living. Although we don't actually see him weaving, the image catches him clearly doing something interesting with his hands. It's nicely timed. We also get to see his face clearly in an unhurried moment. Additionally. the frame of the loom frames his figure. Nicely done.

I really like this: I like the (almost) symmetry and the balance of the figures and the back of the bike and the doorway which acts as a kind of framing anchor from which to move around the frame. Nice and clear delineation of the figures - well done for getting a reasonable separation between the figure right's head and the arm - and I like the concentration on the faces. Overall, nicely done.

I like this a great deal: a lovely gentle moment captured. I like the central 'action' I like the colour contrast between the child (yellow and red) and the goat. I do wish that it wasn't so wide: always better I think to come closer/further away than to distort the frame with a wide lens because we instinctively think that it looks a little unnatural. That said, compositionally, the image works by drawing our eye to the centre with both figures leading us to that point. Nice.

Despite this being shot on a camera phone with the limitations that involves - focus, exposure and so on - this is an impactual image. I really like that it closes in on detail and is rendered in monochrome. With almost a nod to fetishism, the angularity of the lipstick contrasted with the curve of the mouth and the hair makes a bold and erotic statement. Well done.

This is potentially really interesting: hands do indeed convey so much and the abstract nature of this image is intriguing. I think however that unless the second pair of hands is doing something interesting, they're worth excluding. Also timing here is crucial - hands and eyes are the way we communicate but simply holding a phone (?) is a bit limiting - worth hanging around to see if any other gestures might happen. Well done for seeing though - real potential for images.

Whilst this is an engaging and eye-catching image, I wonder whether it would be quite so without the extensive post-processing? I can see that it's shot on an iPhone (nothing wrong with that) but in terms of composition, it relies too heavily I think on decisions made after pressing the shutter. The 'action' (smoking) is interesting but the moment is less so (eyes set) and the lack of control to either blur the background with a larger aperture or a different viewpoint lets it down. That said, it's pretty well seen.

Good images are about where you stand and when you press the shutter. Here, I'm unsure of exactly what's going on because of the photographer's standpoint: it isn't sufficiently close enough for me to see the 'action' - placing a candle. Nor is it timed to explain the figure that dominates the frame from the right. There IS an image here but I think it's wise to think about how you might have captured that and what it would have looked like before you reacted.

I like this but apart from 'seeing' banners, I get no sense of this demonstration. The role of the photographer, and in this case presumably the journalist with a camera, is to make a frame that engages both with the subject and the viewer. We do that by composing in such a way that the information we want to show - the banners/icons and the crowd - are shown in a way that is visually interesting. How about moving through the demonstration and getting a bit closer? How about shooting through some of the banners/varying the angle to which you shoot? Lots to think about here - so push on with getting closer, talking to people and photographing..

Well, it is a little cliched (quite a lot actually) but it does what it sets out to do - namely anchor the couple in the landscape and frame them very nicely through the arch of the trees. It reminds one of W.Eugene's Smith's image, 'Walk to paradise gardens' (1946) - the image of his two children, used a totem of mid-century humanistic photography in the Family of Man exhibition. Anyway, nice frame - well done.

This is a pretty nice, straightforward image - however, the language of photography is light and here, it's almost as if the sentence is a little confused. The highlights on the left side are almost blown and there's not much critical detail in the shadows on the right. We can change this by moving ourselves and the model into light that's more flattering - or by manually exposing the frame - and not letting the camera be fooled by trying to average out the settings. Have a try with both and learn to recognise where strong light is going to be an issue.

I think that this has a good deal of potential - largely because of the contrast between the curves of the woman's hat and the angular and rectangular nature of the street furniture/detail. However the highlights are really blown and I'm afraid that I'm thinking more about the bleached whites than about the texture/shape of what's in the frame. A bit more accurate exposure readings would have made this well timed effort so much better. Keep pushing.

Again, despite being shot on an iPhone, this image works really well as it draws us first to the figure and then through that, to the landscape. The cool palette is intriguing and I like, despite unavoidable issues of focus and exposure, the space that we're forced to view. Additionally, the marks on the ice and the pose of the stick are excellent and make you want to peruse around the frame. Lovely.

There is a strong image in here but I think that the framing of it is too loose. Specifically, too much of the attention is focused on the girl's knee. It's too dominant in the frame and distracts from what is a rather tender moment. I'll ignore the sunlight that is a little distracting, frame left and say that if the frame was shifted an inch or two to the left (sans knee) we'd have a lovely image. Well done.

Whilst I like the idea here of framing the couple with the architecture of the building (church?) I think that the problem comes when it dominates,. What I'm seeing is a great deal of the outside through the window - that is rather distractingly the lightest part of the image - and not enough of the couple. A bit of elevation might have worked better - a shooting downwards whilst standing on a pew so that you'd have some of that lovely polished wood as a shape that dove-tails into the corner of the room with the couple between. It's getting there - just a bit of thought about the final frame would've elevated this.